Live-blogging from the conference I

We’re currently about 25% into the conference and have enjoyed the presentations of two great papers (see the program) and a keynote by R. Duane Ireland. The keynote covered a model (or framework; one of the questions raised during the discussion) of Strategic Entrepreneurship that is much broader than the previously used definition. According to Ireland, strategic entrepreneurship is multi-level and a product of both a firm’s environmental context and its resource orchestration or internal production. The multi-level nature of strategic entrepreneurship suggests that the phenomena studied are on both the individual, organizational, and societal level. Also, it spans both inputs (resources, factors) and outputs (value and wealth creation) as well as the intermediate “black box” of the firm consisting of the acquiring, bundling, and leveraging of resources.

Strategic entrepreneurship thereby takes a broader approach and attempts to both introduce entrepreneurship into strategy, while opening the black box of the firm. The issue was raised, however, whether this is a valuable approach or if it simply a relabeling of already known concepts used in e.g. RBV. A possible answer is that strategic entrepreneurship can explain value to a greater extent on multiple levels in a way that the RBV cannot.

Another question that I intend to find an answer to tonight, is whether and, if so, to what extent market structure is considered in this model for strategic entrepreneurship. It may be problematic while studying the firm that we focus so intently on what is inside the firm and how firms create value that we miss the context. Obviously, to some extent the context is represented in the Irelandian model of SE, but the interdependence of input-output combinations – i.e., the necessity of markets for both inputs and outputs for firms innovating new products – is not. How does that affect our understanding of how firms can and do create value?